Those who have mounted a conventional snowplow assembly on the forward support of a drive vehicle recognize the difficulty of the task. A rearwardly extending frame of the plow assembly has connector holes which must be aligned with matching holes in the forward support of the drive vehicle, so that spring-biased locking pins may thrust through the aligned pairs of holes. This requires that the rigid rearward frame of the heavy plow assembly be elevated to the correct position, adjusted laterally side-to-side, and even displaced angularly before the locking pins can slide home. It can be an aggravating and physically demanding operation carried out often under conditions of extreme cold and poor lighting.
No apparatus has heretofore been provided for effectively assisting in the removal and mounting of a snowplow assembly on the front end of the drive vehicle. Those examples of prior art where wheels are mounted on snowplow blades or frames are limited to functioning as casters which simply roll along the ground during plowing to maintain the lower edge of the blade at the proper slight elevation above the plowed surface. Examples of such wheels on snowplows are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,420,591, 2,431,410, 3,466,766 and 4,905,387 and in Austrian Patent No. 222,164. A related use of wheels on a snowplow is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,865,373.
In environments other than snowplows it is known to provide removable wheeled dollies or carriages particularly for boats, as disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,831,211, 4,601,481, 4,615,534 and 5,072,959. A related wheeled assembly in the nature of a trailer is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,829,115.
None of these prior art structures permits a person to remove a snowplow from a drive vehicle and mount it again in a manner which avoids the many difficulties inherent in that operation mentioned above. It is the principal object of the present invention to provide removal and mounting apparatus for a plow assembly which allows the heavy and unwieldy plow assembly to be moved manually in the manner of a live weight, which is to say a weight partly suspended and partly on a wheeled support such that it can be moved forwardly and rearwardly, upwardly and downwardly and even angularly, with very little manual effort to align the plow assembly frame easily and quickly with the drive vehicle supports so that the locking pins can easily find their place.